THE YOUTUBE READER

Over the last few years YouTube has become the very epitome of digital culture. With more than 70 million unique users each month and approximately 100 million videos online, this brand-name video
distribution platform holds the richest repository of popular culture on the Internet. As the fastest growing site in the history of the Web, YouTube promises endless new opportunities for amateur video, political campaigning, entertainment formats and viral marketing – a clip culture seemingly outpacing both cinema and television. The YouTube Reader is the first full-length book to explore YouTube as an industry, an archive and a cultural form. This remarkable volume brings together renowned film and media scholars in a discussion of the potentials and pitfalls of 'broadcasting yourself'. The YouTube Reader confronts prevalent claims to newness, immediacy or popularity with systematic and theoretically informed arguments. It offers a closer look at both texts accessible via YouTube and policies and norms governing how they are accessed and used. Among the contributors are Thomas Elsaesser, Richard Grusin, Bernard Stiegler, Toby Miller, William Uricchio and Janet Wasko.

Published by the National Library of Sweden

youtubereader.com EXHIBITION

YouTubeReader.com is an online exhibition from the National Library of Sweden and curated by the Nederlands Filmmuseum to accompany the book. The exhibition understands YouTube as a mirror maze - just like the one on the weekend fair: YouTube reflects it's users and the users reflect on YouTube. On the other side of the mirror people are watching and reacting on them. It comes to endless reflections.

Divided in four sections the visitor takes different perspectives and sees very strong visual translations of the mirror maze concept. Simple reflections are shown as a classic mirror maze, global movements on YouTube look like a flower endlessly repeating itself, a kaleidoskope explains how users mix and reuse contents and create new surprising clips and finaly a mirror paradox embodies the clips that reflect each other endlessly.

 

June 2009
512 pages

978-9-188468-11-6 (hbk)

£19.99

£13.99 with 30% Off - Winter Sale discount add to basket

Pelle Snickars is Head of Research at the Swedish National Library, Stockholm, Sweden.

Patrick Vonderau is an assistant professor in the department of Media Studies at Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany.

'This lively collection is as varied as YouTube itself, but it is far better organised. Articles range from the wayward to the eminently serious. They are united by a desire to understand the issues stirred up by this new medium, from the legal to the cultural, from the historical to the futurological. It is a marvellous example of what media studies can offer: crisp, stimulating and often amusing writing that gets to the heart of a complex issue.'
– John Ellis, Professor of Media Arts, Royal Holloway University of London